| |
 Money
for the Boys
A list of private producers contracted for DD's news
programmes was released in Parliament by I&B Minister
Arun
Jaitley. Is there a
message in it? Producer No. 1 is ex-Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad boy Rajat Sharma's firm which continues to get Rs 55
lakh a month while other producers' payments were cut.
Contrary to what Jaitley said, Sharma does not anchor
Seven to Nine (DD3). He's away in Alaska and could not be
contacted. Anuradha Prasad, wife of MP Rajiv Shukla whose B.A.G. Films gets Rs 22 lakh
a month, lashes out at critics: "Our organisation is
good. The fact that we know people in power is no reason
to disbar us." And Jaitley was wrong. She is not The
Anchor of Rozana on dd News. "I anchor off and on,"
she says.Others: TWI (Rs 36 lakh a month), ANI,
River Bank Studio, Shelly Suman Productions, Teamwork
Films, IMAK, Saeed Naqvi's World Report (Rs 10
lakh a month). Says MP Kuldip Nayyar whose query led to
the list: "I wanted to know who gets what and how
they're selected. It should not be discretionary."
Well Mr Jaitley, is it? Bull's Eye
He's 17 years and four months old. But at Sydney 2000,
Chandigarh boy Abhinav Bindra will be the baby of the shooting
range, the youngest of the 387 aiming for the bull's eye.
The teenager shot into prominence this June when he
equalled the air rifle world record at the Munich World
Cup. Score: 596/600. The performance earned him a wild
card entry into this Olympics. "I'm building up form
for my best. I'll fight hard for the top slot," he
promises, as he spends 10 hours daily practising in his
backyard. From the backyard to the front pages, that kind
of sums up his goals.
 Gift gallery
No space in your cupboard for a family heirloom?
Calcutta's India Museum may want it. Last week they got a
250-year-old, red-and-gold-spun Banarasi sari, once the
property of the queen of Taherpur, now in Bangladesh. It
was gifted to the museum by her descendants living in
Calcutta on the same day as a century-old statue of
Vishnu (also from Bangladesh) that belonged to the
Telirbagh zamindari family. Says museum director Shyamal Kanti Chakraborty: "Now more and more families
want us to accept and preserve their heirlooms."
Those old, dusty trunks just won't do.
They Got it
They're quiet workers. that's why when Aruna Roy and Jockin Arputham were named winners of this year's
Magsaysay Award, most people had this reaction: Aruna who?
Jockin what? Roy immediately donated the -- 50,000 (Rs 35
lakh) that comes with the prize. And carpenter-turned-social-worker
Arputham, who runs the Indian National Slum Dwellers'
Federation in Mumbai, grinned mischievously as he said:
"It's not like Yukta Mookhey or Lara Dutta, you know. No one asks for my autograph.
But the feeling of being awarded is great and I owe it to
the people around me." And yourself, sir?
|
|
|
|
|
